Making Sparks Fly: What Inspires You?

Unless you’re the most boring person in the world, there’s something out there that floats your boat. Hell, maybe it’s boats. Maybe I’m being presumptuous and you hate boats. I’m sorry I brought up boats. My point is we all have something that hits us right in the feelers and fills our lives with purpose.

I can’t stop thinking about boats now.

Chances are that at least once a week, someone gets you started on that one thing that gets you really worked up. Maybe it’s over lunch at work or maybe it’s after a few drinks at the bar. But once you get going, you don’t stop.

What if you had a chance to share your passion with a lot of other people? Would you take it? Would you get up on stage and tell people why they should feel as strongly as you do?

If you said “yes” then you should probably be filling out the spark submission section on the Ignite page. No. Seriously, go there. Now!

For those of you still on the fence, here are five more reasons you should submit an idea for a spark:

It’s a different kind of challenge. If you’ve never tried to organize your thoughts into slide form, it’s an interesting and new experience. You’re forced to think of way to best explain your thoughts in bite size pieces. Do you think the makers of Reese’s peanut butter cups got their peanut butter to chocolate ratio correct when they first made Reese’s minis? Hell, no! That took work and so will your Ignite presentation.

Meet people as passionate as you. One of the best parts of Ignite is meeting the other presenters. Each of them has a topic that’s very different than yours, but they all feel equally passionate about their topic. Having that much excitement in one room is a pretty rad feeling. You should try it sometime. LIKE NOW.

Get a rush from something other than jumping out of a plane or shooting heroin. I’m not saying you know how awesome heroin is or anything and I certainly don’t ever want to experience the rush of tossing myself out of a plane (Kipp is that cray, I’m certainly not), there is a rush you experience from getting out in front of 200 people and talking to them for 5 minutes without passing out or soiling yourself.

Have total strangers laugh at your jokes. If you ever want to get drunk with power, have an entire theater laugh at your jokes. That’s all I have to say about that.

Free drinks. Yes, you’re going to get a drink ticket. Yes, frequently your friends will buy you a drink before or after (preferably after because doing an Ignite presentation while you’re three sheets is remarkably difficult) your presentation. And if you kill it on stage, sometimes strangers will buy you a drink. It’s awesome.

So there. Look at how many awesome reasons you have to present at Ignite Denver. I think you should do it. You would be really amazing.